--- title: "Running Pay Per Call Campaigns on Google Ads and Facebook" description: "Google and Facebook charge you for clicks. Your client pays you for qualified calls. Here is how to build pay per call campaigns on both platforms, track the calls back to the ad, and protect the margin in between." image: "/assets/images/posts/call-tracker-pay-per-call-ads.jpg" url: "https://calltracker.io/blog/2026-10-03-pay-per-call-google-ads-facebook-ads/" --- Neither Google Ads nor Facebook sells phone calls. They sell clicks and impressions. A pay per call campaign is one where you buy those clicks, turn them into calls to your client, and bill the client for the calls that qualify. The gap between what the platform charges you and what the client pays you is the whole business. This guide covers how to set that up on each platform, where the calls come from, and how to keep the two sets of numbers tied together. If the model itself is new to you, start with our guide to pay per call marketing. #### Google Charges for the Click, Not the Call It is easy to assume a tap on a phone number in a search ad is billed differently. It is not. Google's help page on call assets says clicks on a call asset on mobile, and on the Call us button on desktop, cost the same as a headline click. So every tap is a cost to you whether or not it becomes a billable call. The caller can hang up after five seconds, reach voicemail, or turn out to be an existing customer. You paid for the click in every case, and the client pays for none of them. #### Call Ads Are Being Retired, So Build on Call Assets A common pay per call setup on Google has been the call ad, often still called a call-only ad, where the headline itself dialed the business. That format is ending. Google's call ads help page gives two dates: Google's instruction is to add your phone numbers to responsive search ads as call assets. If a client program still runs on old call ads, it has until February 2027, and the replacement campaigns need time to gather data before then. The practical change is that a responsive search ad has a landing page behind it. Some searchers tap the number in the ad. Others click through, read the page, and call from there. A pay per call campaign now has two call sources to track instead of one. #### Track Both Call Sources Our post on tracking which Google Ads drive phone calls walks through the landing page side step by step. #### Set the Minimum Call Length to Match Your Billing Terms Google can count calls as conversions itself. Its page on phone call conversion tracking says you set a minimum call length for a call to count, and that the feature relies on Google forwarding numbers. Whatever you use to count conversions, line the threshold up with your agreement. If the client pays for calls of two minutes or longer and Google is counting every call over thirty seconds, the bidding is optimizing toward calls you cannot bill. Tell the platform what a good call is, or it will find you more of the cheap kind. #### Local Services Ads Are a Different Product Local Services Ads look like pay per call, but they work the other way round: Google charges per lead and runs the tracking number itself, so you cannot put your own number in the ad. Our post on call tracking for Local Services Ads covers what you can and cannot measure there. #### Facebook Calls Are Interruptions, Not Searches A search ad reaches someone who is looking for a plumber right now. A Facebook ad reaches someone scrolling. That changes which clients suit it. Emergency services tend not to work, because nobody browses Facebook for a tow truck. Services people think about for a while, such as roofing, solar, remodeling or legal help, do better. Facebook has ad formats with a call button. In September 2022, Social Media Today reported that Meta was adding a 60-second call optimization option, so delivery could favor people likely to stay on the line. Check what your ad account offers today, because Meta changes these options often. For tracking, the rule is the same as Google. Give the Facebook campaign its own tracking number, or its own landing page with dynamic number insertion, so its calls never mix with search calls. Call Tracker's Facebook integration sends calls back to Facebook as events, which gives the platform something better than clicks to optimize toward. #### Protect the Margin Between Clicks and Billable Calls Run the arithmetic per campaign every week. Say a campaign spends $1,000 and produces 60 calls. Of those, 12 are under the duration threshold, 6 are repeat callers and 4 are missed. That leaves 38 billable calls. At $40 a call the client pays $1,520, and your real cost per billable call is $26, not the $17 the raw call count suggests. These numbers are an illustration, not a benchmark. Four things move that margin: #### Frequently Asked Questions ##### Does Google Ads offer pay per call? Not as a billing model. Google charges per click, and a click on a call asset costs the same as a headline click. The agency buys the clicks and bills the client for qualifying calls. ##### Can I still run call-only ads on Google? No new ones. Creation ended in February 2026 and existing call ads stop receiving impressions in February 2027. Use call assets on responsive search ads. ##### How do I track pay per call leads from Facebook ads? Give the campaign its own tracking number or its own landing page with dynamic number insertion, so its calls are logged separately with a duration and a recording. #### Know Your Cost per Billable Call The ad platforms will tell you what a click cost. Only the call log can tell you what a billable call cost. Put a tracking number in the call asset and a number pool on the landing page, and you will have both figures for every campaign. Start a 14 day free trial of Call Tracker, from $37 a month with unlimited users.